Expected and Unexpected Stressors in Major International Competition: Appraisal, Coping, and Performance

2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy R. Dugdale ◽  
Robert C. Eklund ◽  
Sandy Gordon

The purpose of this study was to investigate appraisals and coping of elite athletes when facing expected versus unexpected stressors. Questionnaires were sent to all New Zealand athletes competing at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, and 91 athletes provided responses inside three weeks of the closing ceremony. A stressful experience that had occurred prior to or during their most important performance was identified by 71 althletes. Analysis revealed significant differences in the way athletes cognitively appraised expected and unexpected stressors. Unexpected stressors were perceived as more threatening than expected stressors. Athletes also indicated a significantly greater tendency to hold back or hesitate from responding or acting in the face of unexpected stressors in comparison to expected stressors. Athletes employed a variety of strategies to help them cope with their most stressful experience. Stressor expectedness, however, was not related to coping use or performance and coping evaluations. Finally, a modest but significant relationship was observed between coping strategy effectiveness and coping automaticity. These findings suggest that competitively functional primary and secondary cognitive appraisals of stressors may result from the preparation of athletes for potentially distressing events and circumstances associated with major international competitions.

2021 ◽  
pp. 004728752110047
Author(s):  
Evan J. Jordan ◽  
Girish Prayag

While tourist emotions elicited at dark tourism sites are well understood, little is known about residents’ experiences at local dark tourism sites. This study explores residents’ emotional experiences at dark tourism sites, the cognitive appraisals of their experiences and emotions, and the coping strategies they deploy to address them. In-depth interviews with 37 residents of Christchurch, New Zealand (site of the Canterbury earthquakes), reveal that residents cognitively appraised their experience at local dark tourism sites on important facets such as centrality and controllability. Visits to local dark tourism sites embodied memories of the disaster that elicit more negative (e.g., sadness) than positive emotions (e.g., gratefulness). Residents coped through seeking comfort from others or positive reappraisal of the experience. Furthermore, visits to dark tourism sites are in and of themselves a coping strategy for residents postdisaster. Implications for the development of dark tourism attractions and support for resident well-being are offered.


2016 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 73-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.G. Scrimgeour

This paper provides a stocktake of the status of hill country farming in New Zealand and addresses the challenges which will determine its future state and performance. It arises out of the Hill Country Symposium, held in Rotorua, New Zealand, 12-13 April 2016. This paper surveys people, policy, business and change, farming systems for hill country, soil nutrients and the environment, plants for hill country, animals, animal feeding and productivity, and strategies for achieving sustainable outcomes in the hill country. This paper concludes by identifying approaches to: support current and future hill country farmers and service providers, to effectively and efficiently deal with change; link hill farming businesses to effective value chains and new markets to achieve sufficient and stable profitability; reward farmers for the careful management of natural resources on their farm; ensure that new technologies which improve the efficient use of input resources are developed; and strategies to achieve vibrant rural communities which strengthen hill country farming businesses and their service providers. Keywords: farming systems, hill country, people, policy, productivity, profitability, sustainability


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

By comparing Sam Pillsbury’s cinematic adaptation of Ronald Hugh Morrieson’s The Scarecrow (1963) with the original, this chapter shows how the filmmaker, who was raised in the USA and immigrated to New Zealand in his teens, empties the source novel of the moral ambiguities and transgressive elements that had made the original a genuinely New Zealand work, in so far as it reflected puritan guilt over transgressive impulses in the face of repression, and thus turned the story into a genre film that that is much more anodyne in its vision.


Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-342
Author(s):  
László Bernáth ◽  
János Tőzsér

AbstractOur paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we describe the challenge of the pervasive and permanent philosophical disagreement over philosophers’ epistemic self-esteem. In the second part, we investigate the attitude of philosophers who have high epistemic self-esteem even in the face of philosophical disagreement and who believe they have well-grounded philosophical knowledge. In the third section, we focus on the attitude of philosophers who maintain a moderate level of epistemic self-esteem because they do not attribute substantive philosophical knowledge to themselves but still believe that they have epistemic right to defend substantive philosophical beliefs. In the fourth section, we analyse the attitude of philosophers who have a low level of epistemic self-esteem in relation to substantive philosophical beliefs and make no attempt to defend those beliefs. We argue that when faced with philosophical disagreement philosophers either have to deny that the dissenting philosophers are their epistemic peers or have to admit that doing philosophy is less meaningful than it seemed before. In this second case, philosophical activity and performance should not contribute to the philosophers’ overall epistemic self-esteem to any significant extent.


Polar Record ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Flamm

Abstract While the Antarctic Treaty System intended to keep Antarctica an area of international cooperation and science free from militarisation and international conflict, the region has not been completely shielded from global power transitions, such as decolonisation and the end of the Cold War. Presently, emerging countries from Asia are increasingly willing to invest in polar infrastructure and science on the back of their growing influence in world politics. South Korea has also invested heavily in its Antarctic infrastructure and capabilities recently and has been identified as an actor with economic and political interests that are potentially challenging for the existing Antarctic order. This article first assesses the extent and performance of the growing bilateral cooperation between South Korea and one of its closest partners, New Zealand, a country with strong vested interests in the status quo order. How did the cooperation develop between these two actors with ostensibly diverging interests? This article finds that what may have been a friction–laden relationship, actually developed into a win-win partnership for both countries. The article then moves on to offer an explanation for how this productive relationship was made possible by utilising a mutual socialisation approach that explores socio-structural processes around status accommodation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (12) ◽  
pp. 1455-1460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Legault ◽  
Timour Al-Khindi ◽  
Michael Inzlicht

Self-affirmation produces large effects: Even a simple reminder of one’s core values reduces defensiveness against threatening information. But how, exactly, does self-affirmation work? We explored this question by examining the impact of self-affirmation on neurophysiological responses to threatening events. We hypothesized that because self-affirmation increases openness to threat and enhances approachability of unfavorable feedback, it should augment attention and emotional receptivity to performance errors. We further hypothesized that this augmentation could be assessed directly, at the level of the brain. We measured self-affirmed and nonaffirmed participants’ electrophysiological responses to making errors on a task. As we anticipated, self-affirmation elicited greater error responsiveness than did nonaffirmation, as indexed by the error-related negativity, a neural signal of error monitoring. Self-affirmed participants also performed better on the task than did nonaffirmed participants. We offer novel brain evidence that self-affirmation increases openness to threat and discuss the role of error detection in the link between self-affirmation and performance.


Race & Class ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
Cybèle Locke

This article examines the activities of the Freemans Bay Residents Welfare Association, which formed to promote residents’ welfare and to retain the neighbourhood’s integrity in the face of slum clearance during the 1950s and 1960s in Auckland, New Zealand. The Association’s objective was: ‘To combine socially for the cultural good of all people in the area. To unite as one, regardless of race, colour or creed, for the peaceful and fruitful existence of our residents.’ John (Johnny) James Mitchell, secretary of the Association, invoked working-class solidarity – to unite as one – to bring together residents who could also be classified by race, religion, political belief, employment status, ‘respectability’ and housing occupancy. This solidarity was assisted by the Auckland City Council who zoned the Reclamation Area for clearance, affecting all residents within its bounds. However, racial discrimination practised by private landlords, local government and state departments meant that Māori were more likely to occupy condemned housing to begin with and were the last to be assisted by the state in the slum clearance process. As a result, race remained a more potent signifier for Māori residents and they organised through the Māori Women’s Welfare League and the Māori Community Centre, in alliance with the Association.


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